Abstract

An ellipsis in Paul Celan's translation of Jean Daive's “Décimale blanche” leads, with the help of Foucault's concept of discourse, to a study of the relationship between poetry, statement, ellipsis, and response in this poem. What is Celan's motive for using “Wort” when Daive writes “nom”? Dotted lines and ellipses become discursive means both in Celan's translation and in his own work, to generate unstable relations between things, images, and language. Celan's poem “Muta” shows how dotted lines can turn language into a visual as well as a musical figure.